"Renouncing Evil and Embracing Righteousness
" Sermon Transcript for June 24, 2001 By Reverend Dan Sinkhorn
Concentrate on that chair for a few minutes. We are in Week 3 of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventure, "Seeing the Unseen Christ". This is day 15. And as it seems to be his habit, Reverend Mike has, once again, given me the opportunity to preach the hard stuff. That’s alright, I can handle it. But you may want to fasten your seat belts because it’s going to get a little bumpy. We’re dealing with some pretty tough stuff today. Today we’re going to talk about "Renouncing evil and embracing righteousness". And as we look deeply within ourselves we’re going to probably get stung a couple of times. So look at this chair for a minute, if you will, and imagine with every ounce of energy you can generate a real, physical Jesus sitting here. As real as you or me, sitting here in this chair, God with us, Jesus, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, sitting here in this place with us. He is physically here.
Now if you can imagine Him in that very real way sitting here in this place, do you think you would have any difficulty renouncing evil and embracing righteousness? I think not. I think if He were here in that very real way, we would fall on our faces before Him and we would beg Him to forgive us for our evil and plead with Him to teach us the ways of righteousness. But the truth is, Jesus already told us that we wouldn’t be able to see Him in the same way that we see each other. This chair appears to be empty after all. Jesus said when He ascended into Heaven that He would be with us always to the end of the age and He sent His Spirit. And that is how Jesus is with each and every one of you and me today in a very real way. But it is an act of faith for us to accept that. And that is the trouble for us. You see our faith is something we can switch on and off as a matter of convenience.
And so, when we talk about seeing the unseen Christ, we have to admit that there are times when we’d rather not see Him. When we would prefer that He wasn’t here. There are times in our lives when we are doing or saying things or thinking things or perhaps we are in the wrong company or the wrong place, and we really don’t want Jesus to be with us. Someone once said though that we should live every moment of our lives as though Jesus were to return at that very moment. And what would you want Him to find you doing? Back in 1982, ABC news reported about a contemporary art exhibit in New York that featured a chair not all that different from this one. And it had a device mounted to the front of it and on that device there was a loaded shotgun. And the shotgun had a timer on the trigger and at some unknown time the gun would go off. And do you know that people lined up every day to attend that art exhibit and to take their moment sitting in the chair looking down the barrel of the loaded shotgun? Can you imagine such a thing? But if you believe like I do that Jesus is returning, then you have to admit that everyone of us at some point or another has taken our turn in the chair looking down the barrel of the loaded shotgun. We’ve taken our opportunity to test whether Christ is going to be there when we’re living dangerously.
The journey that we’re on as Christians is a journey that begins when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation. But it is by no means over at that point. In fact we are living a life of renouncing evil and embracing righteousness. And resisting evil is a very difficult thing, isn’t it? Jesus told us that if we were going to be His followers, we would have to take up the cross and carry it with Him. And we would have to be like Him. He had done the hard part, but we were going to have to live the life of righteousness.
Jesus gives us the clue, the ultimate building block really, to living the life of righteousness. When He was asked what the most important commandment was, His answer was simply, "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul." Well, the question we have to ask ourselves this morning then is, "What do you love with all your heart, mind, and soul? Are your affections divided? Do you devote your heart and mind and soul to other things than God? I know, I know...you don’t have any false God’s in your house. I understand. I’ll bet not one person in this sanctuary has an altar to Ashtaroth or Molech in their home. I’ll bet you don’t have any obelisks in your home to the hall. In fact, you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about if you haven’t read the Old Testament lately.
But I guarantee you, that if you’re even a little bit like me, you do have altars to false gods in your homes. Let me tell you about my most, the biggest one in my home. There is this one room in the house where all the furniture is arranged so that it faces one corner. And in that corner there is a wooden altar. And mounted on that altar is a black box with a glassy gray screen on it. And when it speaks, we all sit in our chairs and listen. And we all reverently stay with it until it’s done. That black box determines the scheduling of our lives. It tells us when we can get up and walk away. It tells us whether we should stay home tonight or go to church. In fact, its word is so important in our lives that we have a little black box under it where we can preserve those things and look at them over and over again. And you know what I’m talking about, of course, the TV and the VCR. Yeah, we’ve got a shrine in our house to the television set.
And occasionally that television God will let me get up and walk away from it. And then I go visit another God in my house. There’s the big white box in the corner of my kitchen. It’s an ark, actually. And when you open it light glows from within. And its contents speak to me. And as I stand there worshiping at it, it says "Give me your worry. Give me your nervousness. Give me your concerns. Give me your boredom. Give me your stress and I will make you feel good again." I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some false God’s in my home that own much of my heart, mind and soul. And the evidence of their control over me can be seen when I try and fasten my belt.
But there are other false God’s in our lives and we all have things we can relate to, I’m sure. Let me just list a few, because anything that owns you is an addiction. Anything that has more of your attention and love than God does is an addiction. So maybe you’re addicted to tobacco, alcohol, over-eating, shopping. Maybe you like to be on the Internet or play games. Maybe you’re addicted to sports, pornography, work, television. Maybe you’re addicted to church or some other social activity. It becomes a dangerous and destructive thing when it owns you. And that’s why God wants to own you above all else. Maybe you have attitudes that are out of control and maybe they own you. Maybe you’re abusive. Maybe you have trouble with arrogance, insincerity, dishonesty, gossip, grudges, jealousy, envy, lust, materialism, control, perfectionism, prejudice, procrastination, temper, laziness, just to name a few. And if they own you, God doesn’t.
Now these things in and of themselves are not evil. In fact, that word "evil" is very troubling for us. We’re not comfortable with that word. Because nobody likes to think of themselves as evil. But the truth is, if those things control you and they are not things of God, then they are instruments of evil. When we think of evil we prefer the image that I have here on the front page of the Daily Journal from a couple of weeks ago. Here it says in the headline, "The Face of Evil". And it has a picture of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. He was executed the day before for his crimes. And we don’t have any trouble picturing him as evil or his deeds as evil. Beloved, the problem is that in God’s eyes, we’re just as bad until we accept His forgiveness through Jesus. And to do that we must be willing to repent. We have to allow Him to pay the price for our sin.
Probably the more truthful headline is the subheading on this that says, "McVeigh Executed; Dies Without a Trace of Remorse". And I think it is our lack of remorse that is our real enemy. Our willingness to tolerate evil in our own lives, even those little things that we just named. Because our holy God looks at us and says, "Unless you are living in perfect harmony with Me, then you have sinned." There is only one person who lived in that perfect harmony, so I have good news for you. You are in good company. Jesus is the only one who lived in perfect harmony with God. That’s why He was the only perfect sacrifice. And He died a death that we rightly deserve because of His perfect harmony with God. His suffering was because of perfect righteousness.
So He asks us to embrace His gift as the key to beginning our life of renouncing evil and embracing righteousness. He asks us to live as He lives. He asked us to do it not just because it will demonstrate the transformation He has brought in our lives, but also because He loves you so much that He doesn’t want you to suffer. Now, He said it was going to be a rough ride. He never said that you were not going to have problems. But how many of your problems could ultimately be traced back to the evil in your lives or around your lives? Why is it that the saints of the Bible and beyond rejoiced in their suffering when they were doing the Lord’s work? Because their suffering was the result of righteousness, not evil.
Today Jesus is asking you to respond to Him. He’s asking you to answer Him. Because He is here in a very real way. His presence is no mystery to us. And for most of us it is a relationship that we began a long time ago. But unfortunately, we’ve grown a little cold. You see, when Jesus saves you, when you accept that gift of forgiveness, He lights a pilot light in you. And we make the mistake of thinking we can burn out all the evil in our lives with the little flame. But Jesus asks you to turn up the heat. For those of you who have accepted His gift of forgiveness and His salvation, then He’s asking you to renew, begin again, turn up the heat! Renounce evil, embrace righteousness in a new and special way today! Don’t leave this place without doing something about that. And for those of you who are not sure you understand yet, He asks you to join Him here in this place. He’s with us in His Spirit and He will speak to your spirit. And He will open your eyes and help you recognize what you did not understand before. And for some of you that may be the first time. But we must respond. This is a message that God gives us that demands a response. Because if we don’t respond, then may be we’re still cold.
So today, I want to ask you to respond. I want to ask you to give back to Jesus everything in your life. Ask Him to forgive you for the ways that you have embraced evil. And ask Him to give you the knowledge, the courage, and the strength to embrace righteousness. And if there happens to be someone here who maybe wants to ask Him to come into your heart for the first time, do that! Don’t wait! Deanna’s going to play some music for us. I asked Rose to put the railings up for us this morning so that you have an opportunity to pray. Now, if you’re not able or you’re not ready, I understand. No one’s watching. But if you feel the Lord calling today, calling you to renewal, calling you to turn up the heat, relight that fire in a new way, then come and pray. Do something visible that says, "Lord, I’m taking you seriously. I believe you’re here. And I am responding to you." If you feel like He’s calling you to something, come now. Respond. If you’re able and want to, come. We’ll wait. Let’s pray together for His renewal. Let’s pray together that He gives us what we need.
He is here. And He can deal with you wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. He can meet you wherever you want to meet Him. Let’s pray, "Lord, we know you are here. We can feel your presence among us. We know that your love is so tender and patient that you will lead us wherever we are, however we choose to respond to you. Change us, Lord, forever. Renew us, Lord. There is never a time in our lives when we are not in need of change. There’s never a time in our lives we don’t need for you to convict us again and then love us as only You can. Build this body of people with your Spirit, Lord, and light the fires of renewal in them. If they are responding to You for the first time today, Lord, then lead them to someone who will help them begin their journey. Lord, we are so grateful that You are here with us. We’re so glad that You can be with us in such a personal way. Help us to live our lives with that realization. Because You are here."
Let’s stand now together and sing as the conclusion of our prayer that little chorus that we have learned for our 50-Day Spiritual Adventure. Let’s sing together, "He is Here".
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